by Katie Penryn
I crossed the road and leaned against the railing which runs along the top of the sea wall. The pungent scent of low tide drifted upwards from the rock pools at the foot of the wall. Lights were blinking on all over town and along the Esplanade. Far out to sea the red and green warning lanterns of the fishing fleet winked on and off as they pitched and tossed in the ocean waves.
A dog barked off to the right behind our street. My dogs gave an answering woof and relapsed into silence. The faltering light of the sun long since sunk below the horizon finally disappeared and the darkness of night brought out the stars. Beaucoup-sur-mer was a small town. Its inhabitants and the holidaymakers, worn out with a hard day on both sides of the tourist industry, went to sleep early. How lucky we were to be living there.
But there was a big if-only. Two really. If only some horrible man, I’m sure it was a man, hadn’t murdered a young woman in our garden…and if only Gwinny hadn’t been falsely accused and locked up…. If only, it would be a perfect place to live.
Still for every problem there was a solution and we would find the solution. The murderer would never be safe from my family. We would see it through to the end even if I did have to cheat and resort to magic.
Chapter 16
My resolution boosted by the nighttime peace and quiet of the quaint little seaside town, I let myself into the house. I heated a mug of milk and decided to drink it in the living room so I could gaze out at the stars. I closed the door to the kitchen behind me. I’d let the dogs out to roam around the house when I went to bed. I crossed the hall and opened the door to the living room…and whoosh…dropped my mug spilling milk all over the floor.
Sitting writing at the escritoire with his back to me was a man I had never seen before. Broad shoulders, tawny tousled hair to his shoulders. He was tall in the chair promising over six foot when he stood up, which he did when I shouted out, “Who the hell are you and what are you doing in my house?”
As he unwound himself to his full height I saw I was right. He was long-limbed. His tight T-shirt defined muscled biceps and a taut six-pack. What was a man as delectable as that doing robbing my house? He did have to be a thief, didn’t he?
He drew his eyes away from the page and, raising his head, cast a look in my direction. Déjà-vu slammed me in the belly. I knew this man, didn’t I? Those peridot green eyes. It couldn’t be, could it? I stood there my mouth hanging open and with milk all over my feet.
He stepped towards me with his hands held out. I took an involuntary step backwards. A merry-go-round of crazy ideas spun in my brain and the floor buckled beneath me. I fell sideways grabbing hold of the doorjamb to stop myself from ending up in a heap at his feet as he continued to advance.
He bent to give me a hand up. His hand was firm and warm. Reassuring. The room steadied as I scrambled to my feet.
“Who are you?” I whispered unable to speak normally.
He led me over to the sofa and pushed me down, taking a seat beside me.
“Don’t you recognize me, Penzi?”
“I do and I don’t. Have I fallen asleep? Am I dreaming?”
“No and no. I’m Felix.”
“But Felix is a cat, not a man.”
“What did Sir Archibald say Felix was in his message to you?”
How on earth did this stranger know Dad’s name? “Dad said he was to be my bodyguard.”
“Didn’t you wonder how a cat could be a bodyguard?”
“Of course, we thought it was a joke…and you did kill all those rats.”
“Rats be hanged. That’s the easy bit. I’m here to protect you from all manner of evil, human and supernatural.”
“You’re losing me…Felix?”
“Unlikely as it may seem to you with your logical training in the law and your dislike for all things enchanted, I am Felix. I’m a shape shifter. I can shift down to be a leopard—”
“A leopard?”
“Yes, I’m from Africa after all. But that’s a long story. For now I’ll tell you only that Sir Archibald rescued me when my mother was killed by hunters. He took me in and nurtured me. I owe him.”
I pinched my thigh but Felix was still there sitting beside me. I closed my eyes and counted to a hundred, but he was still there when I opened them. Could this be real?
“How come I can see you as a man now, but I couldn’t before?”
“What did you do this morning?”
“Visited Gwinny in that awful police station.”
“And what happened?”
I couldn’t think of any one thing but then the penny dropped. “Oh…I admitted I was a witch. Is that it?”
“You got it in one. You couldn’t see the magical me until you stopped denying magic.”
“But no one else can see you in this shape? The boys?”
“No,” he said with a chuckle. “I’m just Felix the cat to them.”
“All right,” I said. “But rational being that I am, this is a lot to take in. I need time.”
He picked up my hands and rubbed his thumbs over my fingers. Only then did I notice how long his nails were. How sharp. How pointed. Like claws?
He followed my gaze. “Sorry. I forgot.”
He bent his fingers towards his palm and click the claws disappeared.
“Penzi, we don’t have time for my life history. We have to move on with the investigation. You may have to use magic to help us.”
I told him what I’d told Gwinny. I didn’t know how. Although I had Gwinny’s Book of Spells I had no idea how to use it. I couldn’t even read properly.
“Did you ask Gwinny for advice? She’s a witch.”
“Was she able to see you as a man when she was here?”
“No. This is the first time I’ve shifted up to being a man since I arrived.”
“I need a drink,” I said getting up. “Do you want something? A cognac? A beer?”
“You need the cognac. Scotch is my tipple.”
I fetched the drinks and sat down beside him again, and as I did so I remembered. “You came into my bedroom and watched me get undressed.”
Felix shrugged.
I pushed myself away from him to the far end of the sofa. “And you climbed into the shower with me. You took advantage of my ignorance.”
He shrugged again. “What can I say? I’m a hot blooded guy and you were irresistible.”
I rose to my feet, chugged down the cognac and threw the empty glass onto his lap. “This is not going to work.”
He jumped to his feet and before I knew what was happening he enfolded me in his arms and hugged me.
“This is a Platonic hug, Penzi, because I can see how upset you are. We have to work together. You’ll be okay once you get over the shock, and once you become used to magic.”
He let me go and sat me down on the sofa again. “Did Gwinny tell you what to do about not being able to learn the spells?”
I explained to him all that Gwinny had said — about appealing to the High Council of the Guild of White Witches.
“No time to lose then. Fire up your laptop and check for the nearest dolmen. There are hundreds of them in France.”
“I know that.”
“Well, find the nearest one then. Chop, chop. While you do that, I’ll cut a spray of bay off that tree in the corner of the yard. We have the cognac. All we need is a diamond and a silver goblet. I guess that’s not going to be easy.”
I looked up from my laptop. “There’s a screwdriver and a hammer in that drawer next to the stove. Probably even a chisel. We’ll go next door to the brocante. You weren’t here when we had a look around in there. We’ll find a silver goblet and a diamond with no trouble. That’s if all the jewels I saw aren’t glass.”
My Google search brought up only the major dolmens. Those were too far away for us to reach before midnight, but I remembered the large scale Michelin map I had in the car. Minutes later I had found what I was looking for. The area was dotted with dolmens.
*
We found
a chased silver goblet. The diamond Felix prized out of the surround of an oval hand mirror. We were all set. We locked up the brocante and went back to the house to collect the bay laurel, the cognac and a box of matches. The nearest dolmen was only five miles away. Halfway there I remembered I needed an animal with me as a witness.
“Won’t I do if I shift down to a leopard or a cat?” asked Felix looking at the clock on the dashboard. “We’re running it close if we want to perform the ceremony at midnight.”
“Gwinny stressed the animal had to be a natural animal, not a supernatural animal.”
“There’s nothing for it but to go back and fetch Zig and Zag.”
I was driving because as far as I knew Felix didn’t have a driving permit. I swung the car round and hurried back pushing the car so hard we planed on the cobbles before skidding to a halt in front of our door.
The dogs didn’t like being woken up in the middle of the night. They like their routine and this was sleep time. There’s nothing like trying to move a hundred and fifty pounds of stubborn dog, and the clock was ticking. I fetched a bag of doggy treats and with much cajoling and bribery we succeeded in stowing the dogs in the back of the car.
Off we zoomed again speeding through the dark town and out into the countryside. We found our target after a couple of false turns. Felix didn’t warn me in time of when to turn, and as I couldn’t read the signposts we overshot a couple of times and had to turn round and retrace our steps.
There was our dolmen — two huge irregular stones supporting a third, but it stood in the corner of an unfenced field of maize. Piles of rubbish, old beer cans, and items more unsavory than that littered the surroundings. I couldn’t believe my eyes. How could people be so slovenly as to desecrate a place of mystical significance with their litter?
Felix caught the dismay on my face. “We can’t use this one. I don’t like the idea of a contaminated portal. Goodness knows what evil we might let through.”
He checked the time. Twenty to midnight. He referred to the map again. “We might still make it. There’s one a mile away on this side road.”
We shot off again between fields of maize on what was only a bumpy farm track rutted by the passage of tractors and combine harvesters. The dogs whined frightened by the jolting.
“Whoa — we passed it,” Felix called out, pointing back the way we came.
Chapter 17
I slewed the car round in a handbrake turn, taking maize fronds with me and missing the ditches by a hair’s breadth. We tore back to the signpost pointing up the hill. Fifteen minutes to go and we had to make it on foot. I took hold of the dogs while Felix carried the basket with the magical necessities. It was a steep climb to the middle of a copse of oaks on the crown of the hill where the dolmen sat anchored to the earth as it had been since the days of prehistory. The smooth surface of its top stone glistened in the moonlight.
While I settled the dogs and told them to stay, Felix laid the bay and the diamond on top of the dolmen. He filled up the goblet with the cognac and looked back at me. “Ready?” he asked holding out his hand to pull me up next to him.
One minute. He struck a match and held it to the water of life but it didn’t catch alight.
I took the matches off him. “It’s too cold out here. We have to warm the goblet.”
I held the match to the outside and struck a second one to warm the other side and passed the box back to him.
Thirty seconds.
This time the cognac flared and its blue flames danced in the cold night air.
Felix took my hand. We walked in tandem three times in a clockwise direction around the dolmen to the accompaniment of the delicious aroma of flaming cognac. At the end of the third circle we stood silently hand in hand waiting for the flames to die down.
As they did so a flash shot up from the dolmen and a sphere of bright white light surrounded us. My eyes closed unable to bear the brightness. I heard a yelping behind me but Felix held onto my hand.
When I opened my eyes the images of seven women hovered in the air above us. They wore trailing robes of white, their heads wreathed in sprigs of bay laurel. Their age was indeterminate, but their skin looked as soft as silk.
The middle witch spoke, “Who calls upon us this summer’s night?”
Felix nudged me.
“I do, Mpenzi Munro, your Ladyship.”
The witch to her left consulted a scroll and nodded.
“So, you are a member of our guild?”
“I am told so, your Ladyship.”
“And why do you seek us tonight?”
“I am newly come to the knowledge of my membership. I wish to progress. I have my mother’s Book of Spells.”
“So what is the problem? Can you not study the book?”
“I cannot read very well, your Ladyship.”
“Do you mean you are illiterate, my child? We, witches have always been the most intelligent of women. You should have inherited intelligence from your mother.”
Felix burst out, “She’s not stupid, your Ladyship. Mpenzi has a degree in law. Dyslexia has little to do with one’s IQ.”
The hint of a scowl crossed the High Witch’s face, and she turned to the scroll holder beside her.
The secretary checked the scroll and shook her head.
“I see,” said the High Witch. “Of course, I know about dyslexia. We do keep up with modern medicine and psychology. But there’s no note to that effect on Mpenzi’s record.”
Felix spoke again. “With respect, that’s not Mpenzi’s fault, your Ladyship.”
“Quiet, young man. The only reason you didn’t disintegrate along with the diamond is because we saw you were helping our young member here. You may be a magical creature, but you are not one of us.”
The High Witch bent her regard on me, summing me up. What she saw pleased her for her stern face relaxed into a smile. “Mpenzi Munro, we will consider your appeal. How can we help you?”
I found myself bobbing a curtsy. “Your Ladyship, would the High Council consider allowing me a dispensation from the secrecy rule. Would it be possible for me to appoint someone to read the spells with me and help me learn them?”
“In the normal course of events it would be your mother who would guide you in your attainment of knowledge, but as she is in pris—”
“That’s why I need to advance in magic, your Ladyship. To prove her innocence.”
The seven witches had risen to their feet and begun to mutter at my interruption.
“I apologize for my rudeness, your Ladyship. Please take it as a sign of my concern for my mother.”
Thank goodness I hadn’t said anything about my mother and me not getting on, or about my childhood angst at being bullied to read when it was beyond my capability.
The ladies of magic drew their heads together, casting a look my way from time to time. At last, they settled down.
The secretary took up a quill and the Head Witch addressed me. “Mpenzi Munro, we herewith grant you a dispensation to tell a non-member about your current difficulties and to engage his or her aid in learning our craft. It is our opinion that you couldn’t do better than to choose the young man standing beside you. As he is a magical being he understands the necessity for discretion in the human world. That’s if he’s willing?”
I hadn’t thought of Felix. My idea had been Sam. What the Head Witch said made sense. Sam could leave home at any time, but Felix had promised to be my bodyguard for life.
I turned to Felix, “Well?”
Felix bowed first to me then to the High Council. “Ladies of the High Council, It would be my pleasure. My sponsor, Sir Archibald, would be glad to know I am doing everything I can to free his former wife.”
The Head Witch said, “So be it,” and signaled to the secretary to record the decision.
She continued, “One more thing. When reading out the spells, recording them or practicing them, always remember to cross your fingers to prevent the spell from working.”
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br /> “We will, your Ladyship,” I answered.
“Work hard, Mpenzi Munro. You show promise. Remember, you may use your magic skills only for the benefit of others. Bear in mind the stories of those who have put self interest and greed before the needs of their fellows.”
As I thanked the High Council, their shapes shimmered and faded away until Felix and I were looking at nothing but the darkness of the night shot through with glimmers of moonlight shining through the ancient trees.
We didn’t move for a while, stunned by what had happened, me more so than Felix who was used to being a magical person.
“We ought to go, Penzi. It’s late, but if you aren’t sleepy I have an idea. I’ll explain when we get back to the car.”
The diamond had disappeared, its matter having been exhausted in conjuring up the High Council. The bay leaves we left on the dolmen, but we took the goblet back with us in case we should ever need it again. That’s when we noticed the dogs were missing. Poor Zig and Zag. They must have been frightened out of their wits by the flash of magic white light.
I called and called them, but they didn’t appear.
“Maybe they ran back to the car,” suggested Felix.
We made our way down the hill and there sat Zig and Zag by the side of the car.
“Fat lot of good, you two are. You’re supposed to be fearsome attack dogs,” I said, as I scratched them both behind the ears to show they were forgiven.
While I stowed the dogs in the car Felix took out his hip flask and had a quick sip. “I needed that after those awe inspiring ladies of the High Council. I was worried they might turn me into a toad. Do you want a sip?” he asked me.
I was driving, but it was cold and it was only one sip.
Felix referred to the map again. Once I was behind the wheel and ready to leave he said, “If you aren’t ready for bed, we should knock one of the suspects off our list if we can.”
“Which one?”
“The guy who picked Edna up that night. I suggest we go to the service station closest to where her car broke down and see if they stay open all night and if so whether they have a security camera. We might get lucky and pick up the bloke’s registration number.”